In Germany it’s Nikolaustag today. This means children clean their boots/shoes and leave them by the window or the door on the night of 5th December. The next day they wake to small gifts and goodides stuffed into their boots, which were left by Sankt Nikolaus. As I grew up with this tradition Luke and Max will continue to receive their Nikolaus gifts on the 6th of December.

So to honour that tradition, today I am posting about four pairs of booties knitted for a friend that went to Forest School with us.

She had a baby boy in 2015 and I knit up some blue baby booties for her (please excuse the terrible pictures, I am not sure what happened there). Because my friend liked the booties so much, she ordered another three pairs from me.

A purple pair.

A pink pair.

And a red pair.

They are my version of Saartjes Bootees, and I know I HAVE to write down this pattern, I really must. I have promised it to a few people, so it needs to happen soon!

So, this is me trying to get back to posting again regularly about my finished knitting (FOs). Even though I have been quiet on that front on here doesn’t mean that I haven’t been knitting like a maniac. I have so many amazing things to show you! But for today, since it is after my bedtime (which is 10pm by the way), here are some booties that I knit for an ex-colleague back in May 2015.

Regular readers of this blog will know that this is my version of Saartjes Bootees that I have knit up several hundred times now.

They are still my favourite gift to knit up for someone that is expecting. I love them especially because they also enable me to knit up some leftover yarn from other projects. This particular pair was knit up in DROPS Muskat.

The other thing I love about these booties is that I can knit them in 2 hours flat. The sewing up takes a little longer, but I can basically whip up 5 pairs of these in a weekend.

And of course they fit perfectly into the little cardboard boxes I make to present them in. The perfect gift!

A friend that I studied Journalism with had a baby boy at the start of this year. Even though I haven’t seen my friend since I finished my studies in 2004 I still wanted to knit her something. So I knitted my usual go-to beanie and bootie combo.

The beanie is my old favourite from DROPS, and I knit this up in the 0-3 months size since it was going to be a Winter baby.

I also knitted up my version of Saartjes Bootees in a matching green and light blue.

I boxed both of them up in one of my boxes and sent them off to my friend.

My friend sent me a picture of her sweet little boy in his little hat. Such a cutie.

Today is Luke’s fifth birthday and we had a lovely party for him, I cannot believe I now have a five year old child…

At the end of January of this year I finished a beanie and bootie combo for the baby boy of a friend that I used to work with.

It’s my old favourite, straightforward beanie, which I knit for a newborn up to three months old.

I used a combination of yarn that I had left at home, turquoise, north sea and denim blue, which work out really well I think.

I also knit a pair of booties, sticking with the same colours.

I know I say this every time, but I really should write up this pattern as there are a few changes to the original pattern.

I had some lovely buttons left in my stash, some that fit perfectly with the colours I had picked.

I always wonder if people actually like these for baby boys, as they can look quite girly, but Max wore them for a little while and they looked very sweet on him. He did outgrow them very quickly though.

And of course as always they needed one of my boxes.

Here in all their glory are both, the booties and the beanie.

My friend sent me a picture of his sweet, adorable boy wearing his beanie…makes me sooo broody, he’s such a handsome little guy.

A friend who had a baby girl in December received some booties from me earlier in the year, see my blog post about them here. And my friend used them in her maternity photo shoot, and isn’t it just adorable?

An ex-colleague of mine is due to have a baby any day now and when I found out I did my usual thing and knitted up some booties. I feel like I don’t really need to explain that much about these booties anymore, as I knit them so often and post about them so often that everyone pretty much knows about them. So without further ado here are a couple more pictures.